Bitfury and Longenesis roll out blockchain-based medical consent management system

Managing consents from patients can be a convoluted process, requiring written communications between various stakeholders, lengthy waiting periods and high costs. Patients, who might be willing to provide their consent for the medical data to be used in development of groundbreaking medicines, are never reached by those very organizations that need the data most.

Bitfury, a major development organization in DLT technology, has partnered with health data management operator Longenesis in order to launch a blockchain-enabled system that will simplify and streamline processes to manage patients’ data. With transparency, ease of use and immutable nature of the blockchain, stakeholders can now track and manage consent for individual patients. The system is deployed on top of ExonumTM blockchain platform and enables timestamping for efficient future auditing.

The new system can be used as a stand-alone holistic data management system or an add-on component, integrated within the existing ecosystem. Importantly, the platform fully complies with the requirements, set forth by HIPAA and GDPR.

Among the additional benefits, the platform delivers a reduction in paperwork needed to process patients’ consent with all data and updates stored in the digital format.

Valery Vavilov, Bitfury CEO, shared that the Bitfury is proud of the engagement, enabling to return control over medical data back to patients, adding:

“This new blockchain solution will strengthen the process of collecting data and researching medical conditions, which could offer far-reaching benefits to people all over the world.”

Alex Zhavorokonkov with Insilico Medicine, a partner with the project, highlighted that although regulations among countries vary drastically, it’s the medical research organizations that should take the brunt and bring forward systems enabling the highest level of security and manageability for patients’ consents.

Looking forward, it’s imaginable to expect that individual patients, who contributed to medical research by sharing access to their medical data, will receive rewards from the profits, obtained though the sale of developed medicines.